Monday, September 22, 2008

why political idealogy and economics don't mix

people are posting blame on what happen to the economy this week on a number of things.

a lot of blame is on deregulation.

and truth is that is a big problem, but it's not the root of the issue.

the problem really is the fact that we have allowed economic policies be dictated by mindless political rhetoric.

In this cause the mindless political rhetoric was that of Reaganomics, small government, deregulation, etc. But it wouldn't really matter if it was something ideal that people would be more willing to label as left-wing or right-wing, when it comes to steering the economy following one ideal regardless of the facts around you can cause you to crash.

we expect our politicians to steer our economy (or at least do what they can) to benefit us. but many politicians don't really have a basic understanding of economics. it easy for people to leech onto something that sounds the nicest (ie get them the most votes) and in some cases may have been good ideal under the conditions of a certain time period. but factors change and at times those ideals need to be tweaked or even dropped completely.

But because politicians don't always really know what they are doing when it comes to the economy it more often that they stick with their old ideals instead of looking at the numbers an fixing them.

In this case the problem was that we over deregulated the finical industry. truth is we would have ran into (different) problems sooner if we over regulated.

I think we are going to need some major regulation to fix many of the problems that caused the crash we had last Monday. But I don't think regulation should become an ideology like we saw with the deregulators.

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